Helen Moss/Awen Press:
Some Birds and Beasts and Their Feasts

Author: Enid Marx

Enid Marx (1902-1998) studied painting at the Central School of Arts and the Royal College of Art in the 1920’s, and started out with printing textiles by hand in a workshop over a cowshed on Hampstead Hill. Later, she taught wood engraving at The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, with Paul Nash, Barnett Freedman and Eric Ravilious, and along with Edward Bawden they were known as the ‘Curwen Group’ of artists. She also illustrated children’s books during the war, and designed fabrics for Utility Furniture which were used on London buses and tubes for decades.

In 1945, Marco was the first woman engraver to be designated the Royal Designer for Industry and made a wide range of work, including postage stamps, book plates, patterned paper, calendars and zoo posters. She was a pioneer of English popular art and worked with the great houses such as the Curwen Press, Penguin Books and Chatto and Windus.

Marco taught at Maidstone, Bromley and London schools of art, and was the Head of Department of Dress, Textiles and Ceramics at the Croydon School of Art before her retirement. Incline Press printed several of her books, illustrated with engravings, woodcuts and lino blocks. Graham told me that she was massively enthusiastic about his great adventure of setting up a private press, and her influence and creative generosity was a huge inspiration and help to him.

These engravings will be returned to the family, who hold the copyright of all images.

The book is printed with 25 alphabetical images, directly from the original wood engraving, plus one zinco on the frontispiece. The letter U was missing from the set, so I carved an acrylic replica copied from the Incline Press edition.

The book was printed under siege conditions (the builders were replacing all the roofs, ceilings, wiring, plumbing etc.) and the workshop had not been unpacked, so I had to use the type I could find rather than the type Graham used: Fry’s Ornamented, Lectura and Verona. The paper is a very old handmade Barcham Green, dampened and printed on an 1846 Albion press. The pattern wrapper is printed on yellow Hahnemuhle paper supplied by John Purcell, and the repeat plate was made by Lyme Bay Press from another Marco block found in a drawer. The book measures 11.5 x 15cm, postage is free to UK customers.